But to return to the superior moral and military character of the New-York populace; it was, in the first place, owing to a well-regulated piety, less concerned about forms than essentials; next, to an influx of other than the original settlers, which tended to render the general system of opinion more liberal and tolerant. The French protestants, driven from their native land by intolerant bigotry, had lived at home, excluded alike from public employments and fashionable society. Deprived of so many resources that were open to their fellow-subjects, and forced to seek comfort in piety and concord, for many privations, self-command and frugality had been, in a manner, forced upon them—consequently they were not so vain or so volatile as to disgust their new associates; while their cheerful tempers, accommodating manners, and patience under adversity, were very prepossessing.

These additional inhabitants, being such as had suffered real and extreme hardships for conscience-sake, from absolute tyranny and the most cruel intolerance, rejoiced in the free exercise of a pure and rational religion, and in the protection of mild and equitable laws, as the first of human blessings, which privation had so far taught them to value, that they thought no exertion too great to preserve them. I should have formerly mentioned, that, besides the French refugees already spoken of, during the earliest period of the establishment of the British sovereignty in this part of the continent, a great number of the protestants, whom the fury of war, and persecution on religious accounts, had driven from the Palatinate, during the successful and desolating period of the wars carried on against that unhappy country by Lewis the Fourteenth, took refuge here. The subdued and contented spirit, the simple and primitive manners, and frugal, industrious habits of these genuine sufferers for conscience-sake, made them an acquisition to any society which received them, and a most suitable infusion among the inhabitants of this province, who, devoted to the pursuits of agriculture and the Indian trade, which encouraged a wild, romantic spirit of adventure, little relished those mechanical employments, or that petty yet necessary traffic in shops, &c., to which part of every regulated society must needs devote their attention. These civic toils were left to those patient and industrious exiles; while the friendly intercourse with the original natives, had strongly tinctured the first colonists with many of their habits and modes of thinking. Like them, they delighted in hunting; that image of war, which so generally, where it is the prevalent amusement, forms the body to athletic force and patient endurance, and the mind to daring intrepidity. It was not alone the timorous deer or feeble hare that were the objects of their pursuit; nor could they, in such an impenetrable country, attempt to rival the fox in speed or subtlety. When they kept their “few sheep in the wilderness,” the she-bear, jealous of her young, and the wolf, furious for prey, were to be encountered for their protection. From these allies, too, many who lived much among them, had learnt that fearless adherence to truth, which exalts the mind to the noblest kind of resolution. The dangers they were exposed to, of meeting wandering individuals, or parties of hostile Indians, while traversing the woods in their sporting or commercial adventures, and the necessity that sometimes occurred of defending their families by their own personal prowess, from the stolen irruptions of detached parties of those usually called the French Indians, had also given their minds a warlike bent; and as the boy was not uncommonly trusted at nine or ten years of age, with a light fowling-piece, which he soon learned to use with great dexterity, few countries could produce such dexterous marksmen, or persons so well qualified for conquering those natural obstacles of thick woods and swamps, which would at once baffle the most determined European. It was not only that they were strong of limb, swift of foot, and excellent marksmen—the hatchet was as familiar to them as the musket; and an amateur, who had never cut wood but for his diversion, could hew down a tree with a celerity that would astonish and abash a professed wood-cutter in this country; in short, when means or arguments could be used powerful enough to collect a people so uncontrolled and so uncontrollable, and when headed by a leader whom they loved and trusted, so much as they did Colonel Schuyler, a well-armed body of New-York provincials had nothing to dread but an ague or an ambuscade, to both of which they were much exposed on the banks of the lakes, and amidst the swampy forests, through which they had to penetrate in pursuit of an enemy, of whom they might say with the Grecian hero, that “they wanted but daylight to conquer him.” This first essay in arms of those provincials, under the auspices of their brave and generous leader, succeeded beyond their hopes: this is all I can recollect of it. Of its destination, I only know that it was directed against some of those establishments which the French began to make within the British boundaries. The expedition only terminated with the season. The provincials brought home Canadian prisoners, who were kept on their parole in the houses of the three brothers, and became afterwards their friends; and the Five Nations brought home Indian prisoners, most of whom they adopted, and scalps enough to strike awe into the adverse nations, who were for a year or two afterwards pretty quiet.